Dark Horse Penguin Picks: June 2023
Above-the-Board Recommendation:
Den vol. 1 HC
This round of solicitations is filled with hardcover and softcover collections of new material that feel overpriced. This is a new problem for the publisher and it’s something that’s going to have me start picking up a lot of their stuff when it comes on sale through their app. At $35 for 128 pages, this first collection of “Den” by the late, great Richard Corben could also be called overpriced if it wasn’t for the fact that the comics being reprinted here have been long out of print here in the states. So if Dark Horse wants to charge a premium for this kind of rescue operation, I’m inclined to oblige them this time.
As for what “Den” is about, he’s the title character – a muscular adventurer who roams through a fantasy world called Neverwhere. He fights lizard men, giant bugs, an evil queen and more in stories with art that’s described as coming straight from Corben’s Id. Fans of the original “Heavy Metal” movie might also remember the segment featuring the character, which had lots of sex, violence, and quotable dialogue. As someone who’s seen the cartoon but hasn’t read the comics, I’m looking forward to seeing what the source material has to offer.
Oddly Pedestrian Life of Christopher Chaos #1: “This LGBTQ+ horror-hero coming-of-age series that’s Invincible meets Doom Patrol,” is what the solicitation text gives us. That’s not much to go on, and you’d be right to assume that the creative team is what’s meant to be selling this series as it’s coming from co-writers James Tynion IV and Tate Brombal. Tynion needs no introduction, while Brombal is better known as the co-writer on “Something is Killing the Children” spinoff “House of Slaughter.” Isaac Goodheart, artist of “Victor and Nora: A Gotham Love Story” provides the art here. If I’m being honest, I’d have a hard time picking this up if it was just Tynion himself writing it as he’s shown that he’s better at making complicated ideas accessible and there’s really nothing here to suggest what this series is going to be like outside of the barest description.
Savage Squad 6 #1: It’s the future and humanity is (still) screwed. A force known as the Scourge is systematically eradicating humanity and our only hope to fight them is the all-female fighting team known as Savage Squad 6. Robert Venditti (“Green Lantern”) and Brockton McKinney (“Jenny Zero”) co-writer with Dalts Dalton (they’re new to me) providing the art. It sounds kind of generic, but it could be fun. I’ll consider it further if the collected edition is delivered at a reasonable price.
Baltimore Omnibus vol. 1: $30 for the first four volumes of the series. A.K.A. – the best part. This is an incredible deal and anyone who slept on picking up these volumes should get this omnibus when it comes out.
Blue Book vol. 1: Collecting the five issue miniseries about true stories of alien abductions from writer James Tynion IV and artist Michael Avon Oeming. I’m interested… though the price is giving me pause. It appears that $25 is going to be the standard for most collections from Dark Horse going forward and that’s what it’ll cost if you want to pick this one up. It’s a little more annoying here since the solicitation text mentions that this comic was also serialized on Tynion’s Substack. This means that it’s been subsidized twice – on the Substack, and in single-issue form – before being collected for $25. I mean, REALLY?
It’s Only Teenage Wasteland: Javi’s parents are out for the weekend and he decides it’s time to throw a party! One that will increase his and his friends’ popularity, or get them noticed by girls, or even both. At first it looks like the biggest thing that will go wrong is the sudden appearance of his high school’s bully. Then the apocalypse happens. Yeah, that seems kind of abrupt; however, when the end of the world does happen it likely won’t be waiting for any party to stop. I’m curious to see if this setup can provide a fresh twist on the “Let’s throw a party!” premise, coming from writer Curt Pires and artist Jacoby Salcedo.
Koshchei in Hell HC: Collecting the four-issue miniseries of the same name, plus the “Sir Edward Grey: Acheron” one-shot. While Mignolaverse regular Ben Stenbeck provides art for the miniseries, Mignola himself draws “Acheron” in addition to writing everything. All of this will set you back $25, of course. The most recent Mignola-written volume of “B.P.R.D.” was the best thing to come out of this particular fictional universe in a good long while and I’m wondering if his presence as sole writer is what made all the difference. So I could pick this volume up and find out… or just wait for it to come on sale in Dark Horse’s comics app and find out that way. Decisions, decisions…
The Ones: Bendis’ latest miniseries for the publisher, with artist Jacob Edgar, gets a collected edition for $25. This seems like a particularly egregious instance of price-gouging given that this was originally serialized as a four-issue miniseries. A quick check over at Amazon shows that this is going to be a 152-page collection so either these issues were supersized with story content, or there’s going to be A LOT of behind-the-scenes material collected here. I realize that I’m talking about many factors of this comic that aren’t related to the quality of its writing and art which is in service of a story that’s all about everyone who thought they were the Chosen One coming together to defeat the, um, actual Chosen One. Wait, let’s see if the solicitation text can put it better than I can: “Think Good Omens meets Ghostbusters meets The Adam Project meets The Goonies meets Everything Everywhere All at Once meets, um, anything else you’ve ever liked!” …Um, yeah. I think I can wait to pick this up on sale on the app. If ever.